The present invention relates to a method and an arrangement for transferring to a receiver information in a message using an existing message based service in a digital mobile network.
The present invention also relates to a method and an arrangement for receiving in a receiver information in a message which has been transferred to the receiver with the aid of an existing message based service in a digital mobile communication network.
There are currently a number of examples of message based services which are provided according to given standards in digital mobile networks. As examples, mention can be made of the message based services SMS and USSD in the digital mobile network GSM, but the invention is also applicable to similar message based services in other existing or future digital mobile networks such as GPRS, CDMA, D-AMPS (IS-136), PDC (Pacific Digital Cellular), W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) and UMTS/IMT-2000.
These message based services are used today in many different ways, normal to transfer text information which is to be presented on a display of a receiving mobile station, but also to transfer text or date which should be interpretable by the receiving mobile station in different ways, for instance, as described in the international patent specification WO 97/08906 in the name of the applicant of the present invention. Lately, said message based services have therefore been used as a basis for the provision of many new types of supplementary services.
When information in the form of text or data is to be incorporated in such a message in such manner that the receiver can collect the information from the message to treat it in the desired manner, it is necessary that the sender and the receiver have agreed on a syntax of the configuration of the message, i.e. the sender and the receiver must agree how the information should be structured in the message. This is a problem since different operators or people involved prefer different types of syntax, for instance, depending on language differences but also depending on different wishes about the type of information or service to be comprised in or provided by the message. If the message based service should also be used for transferring information in connection with different types of services, each service must in many cases have its own syntax and therefore both the sender and the receiver have to master several syntaxes.
The object of the invention is to overcome the above problems by providing a functionality which in a simple way takes different operators""demands or wishes for different syntaxes into account and also can handle such demands.
According to a first aspect of the invention, the above-mentioned object is achieved by a method and an arrangement of the type mentioned by way of introduction for transmitting to a receiver information in a message using an existing message based service in a digital mobile network, the invention being characterised in that said message is provided with, on the one hand, an information field which is intended to be extracted from said message by said receiver and, on the other, a pointer field in a position which is given by a predetermined rule while using a predetermined syntax, said pointer field comprising information which indicates where in said message said information field is arranged.
According to a second aspect of the invention, the above-mentioned object is achieved by a method and an arrangement of the type mentioned by way of introduction for receiving in a receiver information in a message which has been transferred to the receiver by means of an existing message based service in a digital mobile network, the invention being characterised in that a pointer field, which is arranged in the message and comprises information indicating where in said message a relevant information field is arranged, is read in said message from a position which is given by a predetermined rule while using a predetermined syntax, and that said information field is extracted in said message from the position which is indicated by said pointer field.
Thus the invention is based on the idea of also providing the message with a pointer field, in addition to the information fields (text and data) which should be extractable and treatable intelligently in the receiver, said pointer field indicating where the information fields intended for extraction can be fetched in the message. In this way, different operators only have to agree on the rule which indicates where the actual pointer field should be located in the message, how it should be structured and how the information in the pointer field should be interpreted. On the basis of such a rule, individual user groups can choose to locate and structure their information fields in the way they wish. One and the same rule (one and the same format) can thus be used to define different types of services.
According to a preferred embodiment of the invention, said pointer field comprises information which indicates to what type of information said information field relates. In this way, the pointer field can indicate whether the information in the information field consists of a telephone number, an e-mail address, an IP address, an identification number, a password, the identity of the sender, the size of a stored e-mail or fax message associated with the received message, the computed time for transferring such an e-mail or fax message, or the like. This is suitably achieved by one or more characters in the pointer field containing a binary coded hexadecimal number, which according to the predetermined rule is associated with a certain type of information according to that stated above. Hence, this gives the possibility of defining various types of notifications/messages/services on the basis of one and the same rule.
According to one embodiment, said pointer field is used to indicate information fields which comprise text or data which is to be presented visually or stored in the receiver. However, a particularly preferred alternative is that of using said pointer field to indicate information fields which comprise an identifier intended to be used by said receiver when fetching or re-routing a file stored at a place which is remote from said receiver, for instance, an agent of the type disclosed in the above-mentioned international patent specification WO 96/01077, which is incorporated herein by reference.
A preferred way of identifying in the pointer field the position of the associated information field is that the pointer field in accordance with the determined rule comprises information which indicates in said message the position which corresponds to the beginning of said information field. In addition, it is preferred that the pointer field should also comprise information which indicates the length of, or the position in said message which corresponds to the end of, said information field. However, it will be appreciated that other ways of indicating the position of the associated information field are also applicable.
It should be understood that the most interesting application of the invention is the case where said receiver is a mobile station, such as a mobile telephone, or a so-called smart phone. It can be established that mobile telephones are increasingly integrated with a preferably portable computer to form a single unit, and it should be understood that the invention is, of course, applicable to such units. It should, however, be understood that the invention is not limited to the case where the receiver is a mobile station. The communication can just as well take place between, for instance, two fixed points as long as said message based service in the mobile network is used according to the invention.
It is preferred that said digital mobile network is the GSM network and that said message based service is either SMS or USSD. Consequently, the following description of an exemplifying embodiment will refer to the message based service SMS in the GSM network. As previously mentioned, it should, however, be understood that the invention is not limited to these systems, but can also be applied to other existing or future digital mobile networks having message based services of a similar kind, such as the digital mobile networks GPRS, CDMA, D-AMPS (IS-136), PDC (Pacific Digital Cellular), W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) and UMTS/IMT-2000.
Additional advantages, aspects and features of the invention will appear from the following description of an exemplifying embodiment.